Speaking of pop culture; (Note the semi-colon use)I went to see The Pogues in Atlanta last Monday night. Twenty years since the last time they were here. Shane is looking well: (colon) better than he did then. Imagine that.

Movies or Flicks or Moving Picture Shows: I shall even accept Talkies but FILMS!!! Oh Geez! How freakin’ pretentious!! I hate when folks have to call movies films! Kinda’ like people who wear their sunglasses on their heads. Pretentious! Pretentious! Pretentious!

But these are culchies – they don’t say ‘film’, they say ‘fillums’. Movies would be an appallingly pretentious piece of Americanism and is only said by teenagers who have visited cousins in New York on a two week summer holiday.

Somewhere back down the road of life I lost interest in movies, film, cinema, etc and saved a ton of dough by going to the library and getting the book.

Not having a TV for the past two decades has allowed me brain to wander on its own through my own cinamatic landscape and actually listen and react to the many characters that passed my way.

The moving pictures I’ve enjoyed most were the ones out on the road with my mates passing a pint and a joint while motoring through psychedelic sandstone canyons on the way to a gathering of our musically inclined clans. Easy Riders all, we did make our own movies and they are easly replayed through the power of memory and imagination.

GranDad, As I would be pleased to come to Erie and wander the back roads to my family’s roots in Dysart, I’d be indeed delighted to show you around the canyon country of the Arizona I’m blessed to enjoy, the Other Country John Wayne enjoyed in his fabled times. What arouses a Quiet Man except a rowdy landscape, green or golden ?

Ian: Yup, we were at the original Woodstock Festival in 69 and followed Country Joe McDonald in the rain an gave it a F*U*C*K, what are we fighting for….cheer, It is nice to know that guys like yourself are still tuning in to the message via this medium. BC is beautiful even though I’ve not been there yet I’ve Pals who have told me tall tails of how cool it can be…Road trip, Next ? BC Bud is the best I’ve heard.

GranDad, you’ve an interesting audience here, I hope I’m not being too intrusive here but me own blog is a ways
from fruition. Later.

There’s a record store in Nelson that sells loads of vinyl. I was talking to the guy that ran it and asked him where he was from, “New York”, he said.

‘Not recently’, I said. He had one of those soft Canadian accents.

‘No’, he said, ‘forty years ago – it was Nelson or Vietnam and I figured Nelson looked more attractive’.

Nelson and the area round about had developed a strong ant-war tradition, being settled by the Quakers and then the Doukhobours. It has lots of ‘alternative’ places.

We were walking along a street when a woman in a shiny SUV pulled into a disabled parking space at the end of a block and a guy on a big Harley pulled up at the lights – he was maybe in his 60s – ‘Ma’am that is a space for disabled people’, he said. She looked at him strangely. ‘Ma’am that is a space for disabled people’, he said with more force. She got back in her car and moved off down the street.

We Googled Nelson BC and indeed found there an interesting character to the place. How the hell did you find this remote place ?

We are indeed blessed that much of the old vinyl is preserved on YouTube an such…We go there daily not so much for nostalaga but inspiration, to be reminded that music is a force to be enjoyed as a fine spirit is to be enjoyed, in its time, our time. Go Guy !

We Googled Nelson BC and indeed found there an interesting character to the place. How the hell did you find this remote place ?

We are indeed blessed that much of the old vinyl is preserved on YouTube an such…We go there daily not so much for nostalaga but inspiration, to be reminded that music is a force to be enjoyed as a fine spirit is to be enjoyed, in its time, our time. Go Guy !

We first went to BC in 1998, we have elderly relatives in Vancouver, and returned in 2001 and last year.

Last year, we were looking for traces of my wife’s great uncle, who had been a gold prospector (never found much) before returning to Ireland for the Great War, in which he was gassed and died in the 1920s.

He was at Revelstoke and Nelson. We never found anything about him, but we found some interesting other stuff – including Nelson.

Tis interesting Ian, as I have been meself a gold miner for the past decade and a half. Guys like your Grandad were extaordinarly tough fuckers. They could not afford to take shite from no one as they were persued by penny stock promoters looking to jump their claims in ecxhange for paper. Who needs paper when you have a gold mine ?

I would be complimented if my family persued an interest in my golden experiences, I applaud your interest in his being in Nelson, what the place was like, back then, when he came to town after working hard in the Dig and…needed to blow off steam. Have you read the poetry of Robert Service ? Go there.

Hardrock mining is not for pussys. Grandad had his gold in his pocket next to his gonads because gold is warm, it evokes a sense of security. kick my balls and you’ll get a sore foot, say he.

Once I get me own blog up ,there will many remembered tales of my own experiences mining for gold in the Arizona outback, the weird characters that wandered through our camps, the crazy woman who were stuck with rock hard men.
Ya ever seen a drunk kiss a cactus ? Ouch !

Hola, Grandad, did ya ever think it would come to this ?
Matchmaker Without Portfolio. Or, is this blog a portfolio of characters that have crossed your trails, and this forum you have provided them with a place for them to vent, agree, disagree, spew, regurgitate and otherwise puke up the bile that clogs their systems. Fucking machines !

Mucho gracias for your hospitality, inviting us strangers into your PC, personal consciencesness. We will try not to abuse the privilege thus afforded.

Sorry Ian, I went off on a personal rave and forgot it was your Wifes great Uncle who was the luckluss, you say, gold mine/prospector.
.
Dig a bit deeper in the Book of Mines in Nelson. During his era you might find that he had indeed been spot on the Motherlode and held deed to several promising prospects. There may be a pot o gold at the end of this Erie/BC rainbow.